In her Culture City column, WSJ’s Pia Catton compares the alleged fraud scheme that has marred “Rebecca” to cases of money malfeasance at the nonprofit National Arts Club in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood and film rights to the life of mobster John Gotti. In both cases, she sees the business of art being “conducted with knowledge gathered in much the same way a teenager might squeeze out a term paper in three Internet hours.”

Financial foibles have hit Broadway too. In 2009, theater producers Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb were convicted of fraud after their company, which produced shows such as “Ragtime” and “Show Boat,” was found to have manipulated financial statements and cost shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars.

A film on the scandal debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, titled “Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky.” As Reuters reported:

In the company’s 1990s heyday, Livent productions such as “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and others were the toast of Broadway, winning more than a dozen Tony awards. Livent also backed the long-running Toronto production of “Phantom of the Opera.” Canadian prosecutors alleged that the two executives directed company accountants to falsify Livent’s records to boost its earnings. This helped to attract about C$500 million ($470 million) in investments and loans to the company.

In 1975, People Magazine described Broadway producer Adela Holzer as a having the moxie and means to make a success on Broadway: “Money, taste and, perhaps most important, a willingness to back new plays to the hilt, take a bath and still try again, wiser perhaps, but no less enthusiastic.” Holzer had previously raised money for productions such as “Hair” and “Lenny.”

But only a few years later, Holzer was found guilty of stealing from investors twice — the second time while posing as David Rockfeller’s “secret wife,” according to media reports.

Holzer told People magazine about her disappointment at losing money over a production that flopped. “It was a big shock,” she says. “I lost other people’s money and I felt guilty. I was starting to have an ego. It made me come to my senses.” Decades later, she would earn the nickname “Broadway Bandit” from the headline writers at the New York Post.

Even back in 1958, the co-producer for “Oh Captain,” Donald Coleman, faced charges of forgery and grand larceny for covering up his theft of the show’s investment funds, according to reports from the time.

Dubious financial sourcing aside, the biggest financial scandals in Broadway are the big-name productions that flop after securing significant investment, says Robert Viagas, the executive editor of Playbill magazine.

“Musicals cost more and have bigger productions costs, and therefore make a much bigger kaboom when they die,” he said in an interview. “The image of the epic bomb has been a part of Broadway legend from the beginning, though stakes were not always so high.”